


Ballroom Blitz

by JadeyKins



Series: Devil's Dance [3]
Category: Supernatural, Superwood - Fandom, Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 07:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1736015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeyKins/pseuds/JadeyKins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's trying to concentrate on his new powers, but he gets an unpleasant surprise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ballroom Blitz

More hours of his adult life than he cared to count—Dean really didn’t care about counting anymore—had been spent in seedy bars like the one he sat in now. Difference was, back then he hung out in these places between jobs. He ignored the pain with a few drinks and a couple of bad pick up lines to a pretty woman. 

Now he was ‘exercising.’

Dean swallowed down the beer and glared at the empty glass. Okay, he didn’t have a beef with the empty glass, but the guy he was pissed at wasn’t in the bar. Glaring at a stranger in here would result in a fight. While the mark burned on his arm and flooded his thoughts with hopes of carnage, he had his orders.

Orders. From Ianto.

Freaking little underling ‘Courtesan’ had ordered him to sit in the bar and concentrate. 

Dean rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. The tension in his muscles didn’t really exist, except it did. More accurately, the tension didn’t have to exist. If he could reconcile his freaking brain and body, Dean wouldn’t have to put up with stressed or strained muscles. The demonic secret of powering through the pain and fighting turned out to be flat out ignoring a vessel’s urges. But Dean’s ‘vessel’ was his own damn body and he had trouble doing that. 

So sue him. He wasn’t even three weeks at this yet.

Today’s little challenge didn’t have anything to do with his damn muscles.

Dean caught the bartender’s attention with a small wave and then tipped his glass. The bartender brought him another beer.

With a giant sigh, Dean shook his shoulders again and focused. He cleared his mind of the stank of the place and the glaring light of the nearby television. Instead, he sought the ‘feelings.’ 

The stank wasn’t just the stale beer from a few too many glasses. Desperation and dishonesty burned at his nose. Dean tilted his head and let his demonic power run out and touch the other emotions. The burn tingled in a good way against his inner nose. He didn’t care that he didn’t ‘process’ the emotion like he should’ve. The physical response was his mind’s way of making him understand. Screw what Ianto and Crowley thought. Understanding the freaking data input should matter a shit ton more than how he did it.

Anger. Rage. Like blood on his tongue, coppery and tangy, the wrath slid down his throat and warmed his stomach like the beer couldn’t anymore. Dean flicked his lip though his teeth. This rage didn’t belong to him. Someone else. Someone else was hellishly pissed.

“You Dean Winchester?” a bold man demanded.

Dean glanced over his shoulder to see two men. Rage radiated off of them. He spun slowly on the chair to face them. “If I am?”

The silent man flicked holy water from a canteen at Dean’s face.

That burned hotter than the summer sun on the Impala’s black hood. Dean cried out, one hand flying to his face, and got on his feet. He spun and brought the First Blade out into his hand in one solid motion. Anyone could say what they wanted about his former lifestyle—at least he’d learned to work through the pain.

The bar smelled like blood now, even though none had been spilled. The mark pulsed through his body, through his mind, and Dean hardened his grip on the First Blade. His eyes changed from the mask of green to the pitch black of his true nature.

He swiped at the closest hunter. The Blade sliced through the meat of the hunter’s arm. Though the hunters had weapons, Dean moved faster. He backhanded the closest hunter. The hunter’s jaw snapped with a loud satisfying crack. Dean reached over the crumpling form of the first hunter and drove the First Blade through the heart of the second hunter. That hunter’s eyes stared into Dean’s as the light of life was snuffed out. Just another empty vessel.

Dean wrenched the Blade free. Real blood scented the air. 

The sudden shotgun blast on his left would’ve taken his freakin head off if he’d still been human. The bartender pumped the shotgun and leveled the gun. With a growl, Dean shoved the remaining hunter between him and the shotgun. 

The few other bar patrons had gotten the clear idea that something was wrong. Their fear left a pungent burnt smell on the air. Yet, they didn’t clear out. No. More of them were armed with guns, shotguns, and freaking long ass knives.

The smallest rational part of his mind—a part that in his human days hadn’t gotten a lot of time—reminded him that Ianto had left the bar. No way had this many hunters shown up on accident. 

Ianto had freaking set him up.

When he got through this, he was going to have words with the Courtesan. 

Dean had taken on rooms full of demons before his transformation. Now he moved faster than a human could register and had a strength the strongest of them couldn’t match. Even with their far superior numbers, they didn’t stand a chance against him and the Blade.

The bartender died last with a shot to the temple. 

Ianto clapped slowly. He stood in the doorway to the back of the bar. A great hulking beast that vaguely resembled a monster of a dog stood beside him. The beast panted and sniffed the air.

Dean had seen one of those once. Normally, they’d been invisible, but now he wasn’t human. A hellhound. Ianto had a freaking hellhound with him.

“You set me up!” Dean shouted.

“So?”

Dean pulled the Blade out of the dead body at his feet. He gripped it tight and took a step towards Ianto. “So I’m thinking I should strap you down to a table and show you what happens when someone betrays me.”

Ianto didn’t panic. He didn’t move.

The beast beside him did. It took two steps in front of Ianto, clearly placing itself between him and Dean.

Dean pointed the Blade. “Think that’s going to stop me?”

“No. But I can escape before you can kill me,” he replied. 

“I’ll just make sure to tell your boss about this.”

“Our boss,” Ianto corrected. “And I’m acting on his orders.”

“I seriously doubt that Crowley would want an assassination attempt this shitty,” Dean snapped.

Ianto rolled his eyes. “This wasn’t an assassination plot. This was a test of power and commitment to your new life.” He stepped past the hellhound and over one of the bodies. “You would never see the assassin if I wanted to kill you. Not that killing you would be easy, Dean. You’re a Knight of Hell.”

“Makes sense,” Dean mused. “Had a hell of a time putting that bitch Abbadon down.”

Ianto stiffened, his movements sharper as he grabbed a bottle from behind the counter and spread the vodka across the counter. 

“Don’t tell me you supported her,” Dean complained. “You didn’t look that dumb.”

“I had hoped you’d understand with a clearer perception now that you're one of us. Perhaps you aren’t as clever as I thought.”

“Why don’t you try explaining it to me before I cut you open looking for the answer?”

“Crowley was gone, who knew where. And then, even when he came back, the rumors were that he was going soft. Becoming human.” Ianto scowled. “He was still shooting himself with human blood when I found him. Looking for the high. Our King was a drug addict and Abbadon wanted the throne. If the other demon lords hadn’t fought her so much, she may have stood a chance. We haven’t been united in a long time, Dean. Abbadon was the first chance we had at complete unification since Lucifer was put back in the Cage--and even Lucifer had had to clean house first. Crowley feared her because he knew she’d have to kill him to complete her take-over. So yes, I supported Abbadon. Because she had strength, intelligence, and a plan to make Hell great again.”

“I think that is the most I’ve ever heard you say,” Dean said. “Like, altogether.”

Ianto continued dousing the bar and the bodies with bottles of alcohol. 

Ianto had a point. Demons relied on strength, power. They had to. And in the last few weeks, Dean would have to admit that Crowley didn’t inspire a lot of fear of repercussion. He’d spent too much time with the King of Hell to be scared of him, but considering the damage done to Crowley’s rep in the last few months, no wonder the King needed Abbadon dead. If no one was scared of the King, and no one respected him, then ruling was going to be a hard task.

No wonder Crowley had assigned Ianto to him and then fucked off to ‘secure’ shit.

“He know how you really feel?” Dean asked.

“He suspects. Then again, he’d be a fool if he didn’t suspect everyone who works for him.”

“Yeah, he’s really not that.”

Ianto tossed Dean a bottle. Dean almost put it to his lips, but he didn’t want the taste and alcohol didn’t affect him the way it used to. So instead, he followed Ianto’s lead and doused the place down.

When they finished, the three of them—Dean, Ianto, and the hellhound—went out the back of the bar. Dean pulled his lighter from his pocket and sparked it. He could throw it far enough inside that it’d hit one of the pools of booze.

Ianto stretched out his left hand and snapped his fingers.

The bar caught fire. Flames raced along the pools and streams of alcohol.

“Never seen that trick before,” Dean said.

“The more talented demons were never stupid enough to throw themselves at the Winchesters,” Ianto replied. “We’re what’s left at this point.”

“You really loyal to Crowley?”

“No.”

Dean flexed his hand around the hilt of the First Blade. “Oh?”

Ianto drifted his hand over the hellhound’s head. An odd sort of petting motion that pleased the dog so well it grinned. “Any demon who confesses loyalty to anyone besides themselves is lying. For now, Crowley has the best chance of ruling, especially with you at his side.”

“And if you get in on his good side, he’ll reward you.”

“He won’t kill me, and that’s about all that concerns me,” Ianto said.

“But if backstabbing him means your survival, you’d do it in the blink of an eye.”

“He has the same philosophy.”

The first of the fire truck sirens echoed through the otherwise calm night. 

“Our cue to go,” Dean said.

Ianto whistled a few notes and the hellhound ran off into the night.

Dean offered his hand out to Ianto. Once the other demon grabbed hold, he teleported them back to the hotel hideout. He’d gotten faster about that. Seemed like once he did a trick, he had the instinct needed to repeat it.

“I think that’s all for the night, sir,” Ianto said. He headed for the door.

“Hey!” Dean called out. When Ianto turned back, he asked, “If you had to, you’d stab me in the back too, wouldn’t you?”

Ianto smirked. “I don’t care what Crowley says. You are a quick study.”

“I ever find out you betrayed me, really betrayed me not like the stunt in that bar, you will see me comin’,” Dean promised. He twirled the First Blade in his hand—he’d forgotten he still had it out, but now he could showcase his point. “Understand?”

“Perfectly.” Ianto left.

All this time and Dean hadn’t worried about demon politics. He’d assumed the ones he’d seen were loyal through and through.

But demons didn’t work like humans. Keeping up that train of thought would be stupid. Even though Crowley liked new demon-him, Dean realized that Crowley’d have him killed if he had to.

“In the game of thrones, you win or die,” Dean muttered to himself.

How had he been stupid enough to think he wasn’t playing in one?


End file.
